Abrams Wants Mystery Back In "Star Wars"

One thing both refreshingly delightful and frustratingly annoying about J.J. Abrams as a filmmaker is his famous love of the 'mystery box'. Right from his days on spy drama "Alias" to his ever expanding film career, there's no question that the man does not like to give away anything early.

Now, handed the keys to one of the biggest franchises of all time in the form of "Star Wars," the filmmaker tells The Times that he hopes to bring back that sense of mystery to a series that feels like it has been fully explored and exploited:

"I loved how ‘Star Wars’ had that sense of a world far beyond the borders of what you can see and have been told. It’s one of the things it did so brilliantly.

If you watch the first movie, you don’t actually know exactly what the Empire is trying to do. They’re going to rule by fear – but you don’t know what their end game is.

You don’t know what Leia is princess of. You don’t yet understand who Jabba the Hutt is, even though there is a reference to him. You don’t know that Vader is Luke’s father, Leia is his sister – but the possibility is all there.

The beauty of that movie was that it was an unfamiliar world, and yet you wanted to see it expand and to see where it went."

He was also asked about the film's tone and in doing so a reference to the famed "4 Rules to Make Star Wars Great Again" viral video came up. He said "I would say that [the video conveys] a feeling that we share very much".